Archangel dreams
by NaryaRingofFire
Summary: Archangels are fierce. They are absolute. They are heavens most terrifying weapons. But beneath the shell they are so much less and so much more. Little piece about the Archangels and their hopes and dreams, as they struggle through their existences.
1. Michael

**This is my first story and English isn´t my first language, so please be nice to me. Reviews are very welcome.**

Michael

Angels don´t dream, but sometimes in the few quiet moments of his existence, Michael lets his spirit float and God is right in front of him. „Michael", he says, not in the cold matter-of-fact voice in which the orders arrive, but in a tone so soft and warm, it engulfs Michael and finally brings him his long sought peace.

"Father", Michael replies, as respectful as possible, a soldier talking to a superior, not a son to a father. "You looked after your siblings like I told you" It is spoken as a fact not as a question, maybe it is even a compliment, but angels don´t dream and even if they should do they don´t allow themselves to go to far, so probably it is not a compliment.

"I did, father", Michael replies, a soldier giving a report. "I apologize for Lucifer, for the ones who followed him, the ones I should have saved" "Don´t apologize" The voice is so warm, so kind, Michael wants to listen to it for all of eternity. But angels don´t wish and angels are not selfish. "You did what you could. You always followed my orders. You threw Lucifer down, when I told you to do so. You did the right thing, Michael"

"I did?", Michael whispers, before he reminds himself, that angels are soldiers and angels don´t question God. "I apologize, father, I meant to say, yes, I did" The voice, oh, the voice, how he loves it, how selfishly he loves this kind voice. "You did well, Michael", his superior, no, his father, says. "I am proud of you, son, I really am"

And at this point Michael forces himself to snap out of his thoughts and focus on his latest orders, because angels don´t dream and angels don´t wish. Angels are soldiers and don´t expect anything from God in return for their services, he reminds himself again and again and splashes water into the face of his vessel. Angels don´t dream, least of all Michael, eldest of the archangels and leader of the heavenly host, responsible for all his brothers.

Angels don´t rebel, but Lucifer's rebellion is all he can ever thinks about.

Angels don´t live for their own entertainment, but that is exactly what Gabriel does.

Angels don´t question God, but he has lost count of all the angels that do.

So why, Michael thinks, as he receives his next order, in this cold hard voice, that never gives him a "I am proud of you" or even just a simple "You did well", as his vessel begins to shake so badly, he really considers leaving it, why is he not allowed to dream for just one moment longer?


	2. Lucifer

Lucifer

Angels do dream, or at least Lucifer does and he is an angel, isn´t he? It has become hard to tell over the years and millenniums, all alone in the darkness of the pit.

"I am an angel", he whispers to himself, over and over again, so maybe some day he can believe himself. "I am an angel, I am an angel, I am an angel" In fact he isn´t even sure if he is still alive anymore.

He is all alone in the pit. There is nothing to do, nothing he can do, but think and dream.

He thinks about revenge mostly, how he will punish the humans, those mud monkeys, the reason for all his pain and suffering, how he will make demons out of them, make them all his servants.

He thinks about his brothers, who stood by and did nothing when he was betrayed, pictures them all die screaming at his hands and laughs about it.

He thinks about God, how he will rue the day he commanded Michael to cast him down, him, Lucifer, the most loyal of Gods angels. And then he stops thinking about God, because some part of him, some stupid, childish part of him still wishes that his father hasn´t really betrayed him, that he will come and raise him out of the pit and say that he is sorry about what Michael did to him. He wishes for it so much, it hurts him more than anything else.

He never thinks about Michael.

Never.

"I am an angel, I am an angel, I am an angel"

But dreaming is not thinking. Dreaming he can´t control, and he dreams about Michael all the time. In his dreams they are fighting again and this time Lucifer is prepared. They fight hard and fast, without mercy, using every weakness they know about from uncountable hours of training fights against each other.

"I am an angel!", Lucifer shouts at his brother and water is coming down the cheeks of his vessel, even though it is not raining. "Say that I am an angel! Say that I am your brother!" Michael doesn´t answer, his face is like carved in stone. He parries steadily and secure, cold, without any emotion, like Lucifer is just dirt, not even worth a glance.

"I am your brother!", Lucifer screams, right into his face, but Michael never so much as blinks. "Say that I am your brother!" Michael never answers and Lucifer breaks screaming through his defense.

"I am an angel", he shouts, as he tackles Michael´s vessel to the ground. "Michael, talk to me, I am an angel!" And then he is just stabbing at his brother, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing, and Michael´s defense grows weaker and weaker and Lucifer is screaming and screaming and then there is the explosion, wings burned into the ground and Lucifer is hacking his brothers empty vessel to pieces, tears running down his vessels cheeks.

He never knows how he manages to stop, or where his blade vanishes to, but the dream always ends with him cradling the broken vessel to his chest and sobbing: "I am an angel, please believe me"


	3. Raphael

**This really was the tricky one. I never really seemed to get a grasp on Raphael and the show certainly does not make it easy to like him. So I decided to take a completely new approach based on some research about the mythological Raphael, trying to connect this friendly healer to the Raphael we see in the show. Please bear with me and enjoy.**

Raphael

He had always been a dreamer and in some ways he needed to be. "God heals" is the meaning of his name and you had to be a dreamer to believe in that, as he later found out the hard way.

In retrospective he had dreamed his way through all the beginning of creation. It had been the happiest time of his existence. He had had his father and Michael and Lucifer and Gabriel and everything was well. No, it was better than just well.

Sometimes he tries to recall that warm feeling of being loved and needed that he had constantly and naturally felt in those years and those he spent as chief healer of heaven. But it is too far away, too far gone and the echo he can still conjure is stale and feels like salt in his wounds. So he stops and reminds himself that he isn´t that dreamer anymore.

Hasn´t been for ages.

Will never be again.

The healer in him, that isn´t only a healer of the body, but also and especially of the mind, nudges at him all the time, trying to tell him what is wrong with him, where it all went wrong and what he should do about it.

He ignores it, pushes it all away. He knows that he is broken, but he also knows that he can´t ever be healed, so in order to survive he can´t allow himself to look back.

Not ever.

He had always been a dreamer and how couldn´t he be? He was the angel of happiness, light, love and prayer after all and he believed in all of these things. Healer, protector, the social center of heaven, always there for everyone.

While Gabriels laughter was always laced with mischief (benevolent at that time, but mischief nonetheless), Raphaels was always warm and welcoming. He was the one all the other angels went to with their hurts and problems and he listened to everyone and was happy to help.

Happiness and light and love and prayer. He hasn´t felt the first three things for a very long time and the last one is useless. A broken angel, who can´t believe anymore. Broken, but not fallen. That is maybe the only positive thing he can say about himself.

There was a dreamer once, who always thought positively and really believed the world was good. Raphael wants to get that dreamer back at any cost, but if he could succeed somehow, he isn´t sure if he would protect or smite him.

Lucifer's rebellion for him came out of nowhere. Of course he had heard everything about Lucifer's discontentment (he was the social center of heaven after all), but he had never even thought it could come to this.

The angel of happiness, love and light saw his brothers fighting each other, Lucifer being thrown into the pit, Michael growing cold, Gabriel trying to interfere, then disappearing. And he prayed and prayed, but God didn´t answer him anymore. So he felt alone for the first time in his existence. Grief and loneliness, pain and hate, darkness and despair… they all hit at once, tossing him around helpless, tearing him apart bit by bit. And still he clung to his believes, tried to smile, to be there for everyone, because that was what heaven now needed most.

He was a broken angel, with an empty smile.

But a dreamer still.

And then one day the last brother he had left turned on him. Raphael had once again been positive about everything and everyone, because he just couldn´t help himself and Michael hadn´t been in the mood. Not at all.

He shoved his brother against a wall, shouted at him and hit him, till Raphael was sure he would end in the pit with Lucifer. And every single one of Michaels words was like a blade into his grace, twisting and wreaking damage that could never be healed.

"Stop! Stop it! Just stop your pitiful show! Everything is breaking apart and you are still smiling and telling everyone it will be better tomorrow. And the worst thing is, you really believe in it. You are the most useless, naive, little idiot in creation! You think the world is all sunshine and rainbows and that you can make it all better! You! Well, here is some news, little sunshine: We are soldiers. Lucifer has betrayed us. I cast him into eternal suffering and never blinked an eye. Gabriel, your other little sunshine, is dead and many along with him and our father doesn´t care. They are dead and our father doesn´t care! Grow up, Raphael! Do for once something useful and finally grow up!"

And he grew up that day, taking Michaels beating. Oh, how he grew up. That naive, little dreamer died under Michaels fist that day and forth came a soldier without illusions, without mercy. A broken angel, an empty shell, that had no problems with killing humans or even his own brothers. Hard, cold and determined, a healer turned destroyer. Who needed an angels of happiness, love, light and prayer after all? Useless naivety, all of it! He was a soldier and all he needed were his orders.

So when God disappeared, Raphael was the first one to declare him dead and support the apocalypse. Because somewhere inside him there was a broken dreamer, that just couldn´t take it anymore.


	4. Gabriel

Gabriel

He had thought being Loki was his dream. After the events in heaven, when he had started his witness protection scheme, the chance to be Loki had seemed like all he ever wanted.

Gabriel was an angel and on earth he soon learned that, no matter how powerful he was, the pagans tended to crack jokes about him. He could tell them that angels were soldiers as often as he wanted, they still believed him a weird feathery joke. So what, if he still refused to drink alcohol, wasn´t interested in human women and avoided fights rather than welcome them? That didn´t mean he was weak! He was an angel and even as a runaway he had to hold himself to some standards.

After all if they searched for him, he hoped that they would still want him back. In fact the fear that they didn´t search for him or if they found him wouldn´t want him back, controlled his actions more than he could ever admit to himself.

But apparently on earth not doing these things meant that you were weak. In heaven he had always been the rascal, on earth suddenly everyone mocked him for being "good". It was painful and confusing and when one night he stumbled over Odin in a tavern, where he had hidden from a snowstorm (after his semi-fall his grace was still kind of low) he decided that Gabriel couldn´t survive in this world. Gabriel was just too scared, too shy, too much angel.

So he sat with Odin and got drunk for the first time in his existence. That mixture of shame and excitement was like nothing he had ever felt before. Later that night Odin took a woman and Gabriel had decided not to be an angel anymore and also was too drunk to think about what he was doing.

He woke the next day with an incredible headache, feeling utterly lost. But Odin hadn´t left him in the mess he had gotten himself into. He got Gabriel out of bed (Loki found out years later that he had also paid the woman), patted him on the back and asked: "You need somewhere to stay, boy?" Gabriel had never nodded so fast in his life.

And so Loki was born and Gabriel loved being Loki. Loki was allowed to do everything he wanted. No one ever looked at him like he was weird or weak or both. Loki was a part of something , yet remote enough that he could never be crushed like Gabriel had been. Gabriels sense of humor had been light and childish, Lokis was dark, but so much more exciting. Everything about being Loki felt like getting drunk and Gabriel was addicted.

And with the time Michael and Lucifer and Raphael and even God faded away and were replaced by Thor and Baldur and Hodur and Odin. Did heaven even exist? Hadn´t Asgard always been his home? There were times when it seemed like he had only dreamed Gabriel. He was Loki, maybe always had been.

Loki, who could trick everyone in the blink of an eye. Loki, who went drinking with the other pagans. Loki, who could have an affair with a Hindu goddess of violence and no one thought that weird. Loki was vivid and exciting and addictive, not at all like pale, boring, little Gabriel. So often he thought that little idiot had finally died and left him pure Loki, but it turned out Gabriel was a lot tougher than Loki had ever expected him to be. No matter how hard Loki tried to leave him and his life behind, he always popped up again in the quiet moments.

The other pagans always joked about Lokis inability to sit still, his need to always be in motion. He couldn´t ever tell them, that he was just running from Gabriel.

It all came down in flames in the end and how shouldn´t it end this way? He really should have seen it coming, but his efforts to forget Gabriel (and Michael and Lucifer and Raphael and God) had left him blind to certain things. So he, a Norse god, had to learn from Kali of all people, that in Norse mythology it was foretold that Loki would start the end of the world.

It took him all his strength to get away from her before collapsing onto some quiet mountaintop. The images in his head were back, had never really been gone despite his efforts and he was drowning.

Michael and Lucifer fighting.

He had tried to intervene, but Michael had shoved him away like he was dirt, so he had lain helpless as Michael tossed Lucifer into the pit. He was the only one (expect Michael of course) who had heard Lucifer begging. "Like a maggot", Michael had said later, but Gabriel thought that Lucifer had just sounded scared out of his mind.

The images poured in one after another and he drowned, drowned in Gabriel.

When he came back to himself his wings were spread for the first time in thousands of years and he knew Loki had just been a dream.

He confronted Odin after that. Asked him if he had just taken him in to have someone to start Ragnarök. Odin tried to laugh him off. "You chose your name yourself, Loki", he said. "I had nothing to do with it, it is just destiny. Everything is turning out as it was always meant to be"

Yes, he had chosen Loki himself, because it meant air. Little courtesy to heaven and angels, even though he told himself he chose it because he wanted to dissolve into air and everyone else that it had to do with his trickster nature.

"Still you chose me", he said fuming with rage. "You chose me and kept secret from me my role in Ragnarök. You and all the others. I wanted a family and your lied to me and tried to use me for the last thing I ever wanted" "We didn´t", Odin replied. "You just can´t run from destiny, Loki" But Loki was a better liar than Odin and he had finally learned to recognize lies. The Trickster had been tricked all the time.

So Loki ran. Just like Gabriel. Because even if you couldn´t run from destiny you could damn well try.

He almost went back to heaven after that. He longed for seeing his brothers, sitting in the garden, having a home. Loki had turned from dream to nightmare.

But he couldn´t. From all he had heard over the time heaven was just an army camp now and he wasn´t Gabriel anymore. He couldn´t turn time back as far as he needed to.

So he became the Trickster.

The Trickster was pure despair from the beginning. More or less he was like Loki, but without a family, without a home, without even so much as a name. The Trickster could be cruel and enjoy it. Get people eaten by crocodiles and call it humor. Always smiling, always eating candy, like he was trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth. The Trickster could make you believe the world had been taken over by giant lizards while you slept or that you had been slowdancing with aliens. But the greatest trick the Trickster ever pulled was convincing himself he liked this lonely life.

When the Winchesters asked for his name and he replied "They call me Gabriel" no one had called him Gabriel for thousands of years. No one had even called him the same name for longer than a week for hundreds of years.

The being that was killed by Lucifer wasn´t Gabriel anymore, nor Loki, nor the Trickster. Lucifer killed something fused together of shreds and pieces, more stable then it had been since Loki, but broken still. Maybe Gabriel had died in Lucifers rebellion after all and Loki and the Trickster had just been ghosts.

Dreams turned to nightmares.

Beneath all the smiles and laughs and candy that was the story of Gabriels life.

Dreams turned nightmares.


	5. Brothers

**So, here is the end of my little story. I want to thank everyone who read and/or reviewed, especially Sekkiera for her really nice, regular reviews. They meant a lot to me. I will see what I can come up with next, after this experience I will definitely try to publish more stories. Enjoy the last chapter everyone :)**

Brothers

Archangels are fierce. They are absolute. They are heavens most terrifying weapon. But beneath the shell they are so much less and so much more.

There is a garden in the center of heaven, a garden that once was all of heaven, before it was expanded when God created more angels and later when the humans came. Heaven expands every day, but that little piece of the past always stays. Untouched. Undefiled. Cared for by the gardener, carefully groomed and kept.

It is the place where the archangels grew up, where God created them and let them play. Some people see Gods throne room when they enter the garden, some see Eden, two saw the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. But beneath whatever it is you see, the garden gives you a certain feeling. There are memories long pushed away, that live here and find their way into your heart.

God giving Lucifer to Michael after creating him and Michael smiling proudly at his little brother.

Raphael snuggling between his two older brothers, in perfect happiness.

Gabriel being chased by Lucifer after pulling his latest prank, while Michael and Raphael watch laughing.

Four little angels laughing under a tree.

That is what the garden is. The archangels home. An eternity of laughter and happiness and being brothers.

That is what it all comes down to in the end. That is what connects them, what they all dream of even if they could never admit that to themselves.

Sometimes when Joshua is alone the garden, he can almost see them. Lucifer and Raphael listening to Gabriels breathless talking, while Michael watches them smiling and protective.

They never go to the garden anymore; Lucifer and Gabriel because they can´t enter heaven and Michael and Raphael because the memories are just too painful; but the garden is always there. A little paradise, at the center of heaven, waiting for the archangels to come home.

Waiting for four brothers to fulfill the dream they all share.


End file.
